Digital Mental Health: Ecological Momentary Assessment and Gamified Therapeutic Tools for Youths.

Mental health problems in youths are a major concern with negative impact for their future development as adults. Thus, efforts are needed in order to better respond to children and adolescents `needs in a way that is effective, suits their preferences and are of interest for them. In this symposium we aim to present newly developed mobile apps that can assess emotional experiences and behaviors in real life and in simulated gamified situations, along with their validation results. These innovative methods can be especially useful for the psychological therapy with children and adolescents and their families. The first presentation will be done by Dr. Oana David on the reliability and validity of the evaluation modules from the REThink therapeutic game with regard to the assessment of emotion regulation abilities in youths and the personalizing of the therapeutic game. The second presentation will be done by Mrs. Ioana Iuga and will refer to the integrative REThink EMOTIONS platform with its experience momentary assessment (EMA) and intervention tools, Mood Wheel and PsyPills. The third presentation will be done by Dr. Juani Bretón-López on apps that can be used as support tools for the EMAs for tracking several psychological variables in youths, such as outcome variables and mechanisms of change, with their unique benefits. In the fourth presentation, Dr. Juani Bretón-López will present a study about the use of EMAs in a psychological clinic and the main experiences informed by the families and therapists during the use of these technologies in the treatment of psychological disorders.